Volunteer Tutoring Program Unites a Community

 

Locals describe Jeffersonville, a tiny rural community in Twiggs County, Georgia, as having “more pine trees than people.” The town — population 6,791— is so small it has only one grocery store (a Piggly Wiggly) and one elementary school.

Over the last seven years, Jeffersonville Elementary School (JES) has developed a thriving partnership with AARP Foundation Experience Corps, a volunteer program that trains people over 50 to help students become better readers by the end of third grade.

Experience Corps came to JES through a collaboration with the United Way of Central Georgia, which facilitates the program at JES and 10 other sites across the wider Macon Region. Mack Bullard, now the superintendent of Twiggs County Schools, had seen the program’s impact firsthand as the assistant superintendent of neighboring (and much larger) Bibb County, where it’s been improving reading outcomes since 2015. “Students in rural communities don't have as many opportunities — libraries, plays to go to, programs to get involved in,” says Bullard, who grew up in a small, rural town himself. “Experience Corps tutors help close that gap.”

Mark Davis, the principal at JES, has been working in education for 28 years — long enough to know a good thing when he sees it. Graduation rates in the county have increased every year since JES became an Experience Corps partner in 2018. "I can't find another program that's been as productive as this one has been for our school system,” Davis remarks. “We see the growth from kindergarten level all the way to high school in our county."

Chastity Willis teaches second grade and has seen a marked difference in the students who receive tutoring. Their test scores are better, and it brings her joy to see their confidence grow. “As their comprehension improves, so does their excitement about reading aloud,” Willis says. “They’re always raising their hands to read now.”

One of those children is 7-year-old Kynzlie, who worked with her tutor twice a week last year and started second grade this fall. She believes she’s a much better reader than when she started, and she loves reading the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series by Laura Joffe Numeroff. But the best part of having a tutor, she says, is that “reading books makes you learn more and more and more.”

In Jeffersonville, Experience Corps is a community effort. With few places for residents to congregate, tutoring at JES has become a popular shared experience. The retention rate is extremely high, and active tutors often recruit their spouses and relatives.

Among the program’s volunteer tutors are a pastor, a city councilmember, retired teachers and school board members. “These are leaders in the community, and our students know it,” says Bullard. “To see them taking the time to read with them, that’s powerful. That says to a child, ‘I must be special. What we are doing must be important.’”

Carl Tims, Chief Operating Officer at United Way of Central Georgia, notes: “It's a great collaboration when you think about our seasoned citizens who may be facing social isolation ... and you partner them with an area of great need, which is literacy. And this blossoms into a student who enjoys seeing that volunteer come on a weekly basis…. It's a beautiful collaboration."

For the tutors, the relationships they develop with the children while helping lay the foundation for future success are all the reward they need.

Husband-and-wife volunteers Randy and Nita Hardin, who commute 45 minutes each way to tutor, hope their influence lasts well beyond the years the children are in the program. "When we finish reading Experience Corps books, we give them to the kids to take home," says Randy. "We encourage them to read it to their siblings or whoever is in the home with them, and to work on the skills they've acquired."

Chesney Butler, a tutor and school board member, is grateful to give back to the community he grew up in. He loves the excitement on the students’ faces. "I want to be here every single day I can,” he says. “I do it strictly for the kids in our community, and that's important to me.”

For tutor Elaine Middleton, it’s about sharing the passion for reading that her mother passed down to her as a child. “I’ve always been an avid reader,” she says. “I want the students to be able to read fluently and not get frustrated.” Middleton tutored with her husband, and although he recently passed away, she plans to continue. “I want the children to have the same joy that I get from reading.”

Milton Sampson retired from teaching in 2005 but couldn’t stay away, volunteering and working in various roles in the school system for the last 20 years. He likes the structure of Experience Corps, which provides training and a format so he can not only tutor the children but also track their progress.

“I don't get paid for it financially, but I get paid for it when I see the children in the street, in the church, in the community, and they appreciate the work that we've done helping them read and pass that test and become somebody in the community,” Sampson explains. “There's no amount of money that can replace that.”

Learn more about AARP Foundation Experience Corps and how to become a volunteer.

Read more stories about how our programs have helped people find hope, and about the volunteers who give so much of themselves to help others.